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George Vithoulkas on Homeopathy

During George Vithoulkas's visit to Bombay in January 1994, Dr. Rajesh Shah interviewed him discussing various vital aspects of homeopathy practice. Following are some of the excerpts. Some more part of the interview will be published in the next issue.

During George Vithoulkas's visit to Bombay in January 1994, Dr. Rajesh Shah interviewed him discussing various vital aspects of homeopathy practice. Following are some of the excerpts. Some more part of the interview will be published in the next issue.

Dr. Rajesh Shah (R.S.): Your concept of essence has become popular worldwide. How do you understand the term essence and perceive essence in the patient?

George Vithoulkas (G.V): The understanding of essence can be of great help in remedy selection. For example, fear of being alone is common to may remedies, but is expressed different by each remedy. This individual expression forms the essence of the remedy. These differences are very important to understand drug differentiation between the remedies. It is in a different way that the same symptom will be describe in each remedy. This was something that I realized and describe later on as essence of the remedy. I would describe the differences between the remedied under the same rubric.

R.S.: Do you think that you can prescribe a remedy, without its so called essence being present?

G.V: You can certainly prescribe the remedy without its essence being present. There are different ways of prescribing and when we make a decision upon a remedy we don't make it on essence, we don't make it on causative factor, we don't make it on key â€“notes. We make it on combination. When the individual is sick on combination. When the individual is sick on mental-emotional level, this psychopathology forms a very important tool for the selection of the remedy, which I call the essence of the case. If the individual is sick on physiological (physical) level only, you may not get the essence at all.

R.S: It is a common complaint that in your seminar you do not teach generously; give minimum possible and very few cases people generally expect a lot more from you especially when get to learn directly from you. Please comment!

G.V: This is not true; usually my seminars are based on long cases. While teaching with such cases, I say everything that cancans the case say everything that concurs that case. My students/participants can follow up to see the whole thing. I am the only teacher, I believe, who gives information about how I find the remedy. I show the system. People have their own ideas about what is good teaching, have my own! It is a matter of perception, what is good and not good for me the student should get my way of thinking, not the product. Even if I give 100 cases, it will still be incomplete but if the get my way of analysis in depth, it will be more useful then many cases.

R.S: How do you place the value of dreams in your case-analysis?

G.V: I place the value of dream as a value of any one symptom. A dream which is repeated is valuable. I do not inflate the dream because I have seen that certain people who have done this, have gone wrong eventually, I do not make interpretation of dreams, because id you give one dream to a class of 100 student, you will have 95 different interpretations!

R.S: How often do you use so called acute remedies as constitutional e.g. Aconite, Belladonna, Camphor etc? How do you differentiate acute and chronic remedies?

G.V: Aconite is more of constitutional remedy than acute. Belladonna is roughly 20% chronic and 80% acute. Belladona works very well in psoriasis and diabetes. I do not differentiate between acute and chronic. I also prescribe Sulphur, Calcaria, and Phosphorus as acute remedies.

R.S: What are the reasons according to you, due to which homeopathy has not been recognized for its efficacy in the treatment of infective diseases?

G.V: Infectious diseases have the peculiarity that they do not give time to the homeopathy to act, bad the right remedy should be immediately established, otherwise we may lose the patient. This fear is a great handicap that we have against allopathic medicine under which everyone dies without any consequence. On the contrary the doctors have the sense that they have done their duties and have done the best possible. This unfair situation is holding us back in establishing the real efficacy of homeopathy in infectious diseases. From personal experience I would say that good homeopathy is much superior to antibiotics and I am prepared to prove it in a controlled experiment, but bad homeopathy can be disastrous and this is the whole difficulty. The results do not depend on standard medicines but on high standards of knowledge.

R.S: What is your viewpoint on the idea of understanding the remedies with the help of fairy-tales?

G.V: This is exactly what I mean confusion can ensue from such fantasies that can damage homeopathy tremendously. I am not against new ideas as long they are tested properly.

R.S: Who influenced you the most in your homeopathic life?

G.V: Definitely, it was Kent and Hahnemann. I felt I had a deep connection and understanding of their writings all others add small pieces but nothing substantial.

R.S: Do you or not agree in the belief that the constitutional remedy remains the same throughout the life?

G.V: There are some cases, very few indeed, with no miasmatic complication, who are the people with beat health on this planet. Those will require one remedy over a long period of time and for different aliment and perhaps throughout their life, end of their vitality- they will require other remedies as well to ameliorate the last day of their suffering but the over whelming majority. I would say 95% of the people today would definitely require more than one remedy at various stages in life.

R.S: What about the core remedy idea?

G.V: Core remedy is the deep remedy, which is in the core in the deepest part of individual which we have to find! The remedies other than the core remedy are superficial remedies! And the we go the previous life? This pure nonsense, which comes from idea and not from experience. Experience is different. When you want to cure, one cannot do it only with ideas! There was another idea that only certain remedies were acting homeopathically, like the Magnesiums, the Mercuries the Calcareas and Sulphur, Nux-v, Ars, throw it away! I say how can you do this? People believe it. They threw away a case of Nux-v. Without Nux-v you will never cure that person in your life. First Nux-v, and then Sulphur. There are some people who say oh, but he was Sulphur from the beginning. The core remedy was Sulphur I say, nonsense unless you give Nux-v first, Sulphur will not act. The essences at this moment is Nux-v, the essence later is Sulphur. You will see the changes in the person, from fastidious he has become sloppy, he doesnâ€™t care about order and he has become lazy. It doesn't matter how many times you give Sulphur, it won't act. When you have to treat you cannot say, yes but my theory say, I have to find the core remedy! If that case is a strong Nux-v case, how can you get away with it?

R.S: At the end of almost 200 years, how do you look at the status and the future of homeopathy at the international level?

G.V: Homeopathy is on the ascendant. Quite obviously it is becoming more and more popular and no comparison can be made to what it was 20 year ago. The future of homeopathy will be brighter. I see colleges and hospitals in Europe and the U.S.A where homeopathy will be taught at the university level. I believe a transformation in medicine will take place and eventually homeopathy will occupy 80% of teaching and practice in therapeutics. I believe that far in future, treatment will be given by stimulation of the remedy, with some specially designed stimulator. Eventually the technology will take over.

R.S: What is your most significant contribution to homeopathy?

G.V: The Expert system (VES) that I have created with the help of the Belgian university of Namur and the materia medica. I am writing only six volumes so far through I started writing it six years ago.

R.S: What is your message to the students of homeopathy?

G.V: If homeopathy gives you joy and enthusiasm when you study it, then continue and you will become a great healer but if you feel bored with your studies and you do it only for the sake of having a lucrative profession, I advice you to give it up immediately, other wise you will feel sorry the rest of your life.